The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow. The longer he lives, the more stupid he becomes, because his anxiety to avoid unavoidable death becomes more and more acute. What bitterness! He lives for what is always out of reach! His thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present. CHUANG TZU.
As a Buddhist, I view death as a normal process, a reality that I accept will occur as long as I remain in this earthly existence. Knowing that I cannot escape it, I see no point in worrying about it. I tend to think of death as being like changing your clothes when they are old and worn out, rather than as some final end. Yet death is unpredictable: We do not know when or how it will take place. So it is only sensible to take certain precautions before it actually happens.
Knowing that I cannot escape it, I see no point in worrying about.
The secret is not to “think” about thoughts, but to allow them to flow through the mind, while keeping your mind free of afterthoughts.
Do not mistake understanding for realization, and do not mistake realization for liberation.
As long as you cultivate stillness, you may enjoy peace, but whenever your mind is a little bit disturbed, deluded thoughts will set in again.
There is only one law in the universe that never changes – that all things change, and that all things are impermanent.
So one moment you have lost something precious, and then, in the very next moment, you find your mind is resting in a deep state of peace.
Whatever you find yourself thinking, let that thought rise and settle, without any constraint. Don’t grasp at it, feed it, or indulge it; don’t cling to it and don’t try to solidify it. Neither follow thoughts nor invite them; be like the ocean looking at its own waves, or the sky gazing down on the clouds that pass through it.
Whatever you do, don’t shut off your pain. Accept your pain and remain vulnerable. However desperate you become, don’t shut off your pain because it is in fact trying to hand you a precious gift – the chance of discovery through spiritual practice, what lies behind sorrow. And don’t we know and only far too well, that protection from pain doesn’t work. And when we try and defend ourselves from suffering, we only suffer more and don’t learn what we can from experience.
The nature of everything is illusory and ephemeral, Those with dualistic perception regard suffering as happiness, Like they who lick the honey from a razor’s edge. How pitiful they who cling strongly to concrete reality: Turn your attention within, my heart friends.5.
Just look at your mind for a few minutes. You will see that it is like a flea, constantly hopping to and fro. You will see that thoughts arise without any reason, without any connection. Swept along by the chaos of every moment, we are the victims of the fickleness of our mind.
There are so many ways of making the approach to meditation as joyful as possible. You can find the music that most exalts you and use it to open your heart and mind. You can collect pieces of poetry, or quotations of lines of teachings that over the years have moved you, and keep them always at hand to elevate your spirit.
We are acting as if we were the last generation on the planet. Without a radical change in heart, in mind, in vision, the earth will end up like Venus, charred and dead.
But, in fact, impermanence is like some of the people we meet in life – difficult and disturbing at first, but on deeper acquaintance far friendlier and less unnerving than we could have imagined.
This world can seem marvelously convincing until death collapses the illusion and evicts us from our hiding place.
Rely on the message of the teacher, not on his personality; Rely.
We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. MONTAIGNE.
Sometimes I think the greatest achievement of modern culture its its brilliant selling of samsara and its barren distractions. Modern society seems to me a celebration of all the things that lead away from the truth, make truth hard to live for, and discourage people from even believing that it exists.
Life and death are in the mind, and nowhere else.